


Sleepover

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24776173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: Five times Kathryn Janeway and Tom Paris slept together platonically — and one time they didn’t.
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway/Tom Paris
Comments: 9
Kudos: 62





	Sleepover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Curator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/gifts), [MiaCooper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiaCooper/gifts).



> This plays a little fast and loose with canon, especially who was where when. (Huh?) 
> 
> For Curator, who started me thinking about academy shenanigans if Janeway and Paris were only a couple years apart in age, and for MiaCooper, who reminded me of the following exchange and the speculation that Tom could make some *educated* guesses...
> 
> JANEWAY: When I was in high school I snuck out of the house a couple times late at night. Had to tiptoe past my parents’ bedroom. That’s kind of how I feel right now.  
> PARIS: You sneaked out of your house? Where were you going?  
> JANEWAY: I’ll have to leave that to your imagination, Lieutenant.  
> PARIS: Can I take a few guesses?

The first time Katie Janeway and Tommy Paris slept in the same bed was totally innocent. Technically, it wasn’t a bed at all, but the bridge of the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ , which (technically) wasn’t really a ship at all, but just an old deckplate they had appropriated from one of the Janeways’ outbuildings. They were both a little too old for such make-believe games, but not by much, so they slid down the hillside, spinning and shouting about internal dampers, until the sun went down. Fireflies flickered just out of reach. Tommy plucked a feathery stalk of grass and tickled Katie until she couldn’t breathe. Then they sprawled silently in the sweet-smelling field, side by side, and they watched the stars come out. Somewhere along the way, the stars above them elongated and warped into the starfields of their dreams. When Gretchen Janeway found them, she covered them with matching blankets and murmured something about two peas in a pod, which was entirely too earthbound a metaphor, but after all they weren’t awake to object.

* * *

The second time they slept side by side, it also technically wasn’t in a bed.

“Kathryn Janeway, teenage delinquent,” whispered Tom.

Kathryn nearly fell out of the tree. “You’ll get us caught!” she hissed back.

Technically, they were both breaking curfew, but they also both knew that no one would care except their own parents — and they both had reason to rebel against their fathers, these days.

“The command track can suck it,” said Tom fervently when they were deep enough into the cornfield to talk without fear of discovery. “I’m going to fly a ship faster and farther than anyone else, ever.”

“And I‘m going to make scientific discoveries,” said Kathryn staunchly, “and see things no one else has ever seen.”

“I’ll fly you there,” promised Tom. “Far away where no one else can make decisions for us. I’ll take you there and back again, just like in the stories.”

They reached the clearing with its lightning-struck tree. Kathryn sprawled in the meadow grasses. “Why come back?” She gestured at the galaxy spread above them, a splash of stars spiraling in endless promise. “Our future’s out there.”

They drank half the bottle of wine that Kathryn had smuggled from her father’s cellar, and stowed the rest like buried treasure between the charred roots of Kathryn’s former favorite climbing tree. Then they fell asleep there, side by side among the slumbering flowers, waking only when a raucous flock of crows descended on the cornfield with the first rays of dawn.

* * *

The third time they shared a bed was at Starfleet Academy. They went by Kathryn and Tom, now, at least with everyone except each other. They had no classes or even friends in common, being several years apart, but everyone knew they were children of Admirals. Most people seemed to assume their friendship was purely practical: words like _tutor_ and _networking_ , _power play_ and _dynasty_ were bandied about. Some assumed that Kathryn was grooming Tom for her first officer; others snidely said that he was riding her coattails.

Meanwhile, Tommy and Katie snickered behind everyone’s backs, built an old television from scratch, watched ancient “movies” and made fun of the monsters, spaceships and physics, and fell asleep on each other’s couches. The bed was an aberration — a night of Antarean brandy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Gretchen Janeway’s brownies and a successful prank played on an overbearing Andorian dormitory monitor (Kathryn made a mental note to deprogram the universal translator by Monday; she didn’t actually want to sabotage the Andorian’s astrophysics grade, even if it _would_ be both gratifying and fitting to hear an entire presentation on “asshole-physics”). 

She still had a smile on her face as she fell asleep, and Tom allowed himself one brief moment of indulgence to memorize the caress of her hair on his cheek, the warmth of her body as she curved into his embrace, the flutter of her lashes as her eyes twitched in response to dreams he didn’t dare imagine. Then he tucked all those thoughts firmly away, tucked the blanket under Kathryn’s chin, and let his own eyes drift close, determined to dream only of the stars and adventure and other things less dangerous than the woman in his arms.

The morning should have been awkward — they weren’t children anymore, falling asleep in a field — but it wasn’t. Tom tickled Kathryn’s neck with a lock of her own hair, she laughed and swatted his hand away, and then Tom’s Bolian roommate asked if either of them knew how to calculate the theoretical collapse rate of a static warp bubble based on the Kosinski Constant, and everything was back to normal. (And if Kathryn peeked slyly while Tom changed his shirt, well, that was between her and the Bolian, who winked and ostentatiously buried his nose in his datapad.)

* * *

The fourth time they shared a bed, her father and fiancé had both just died and Kathryn was cold all the time, alone and adrift. Tom showed up out of the blue. It never occurred to Kathryn to wonder who told him, or how he got there. It seemed only natural that he should appear when she needed him, even if she’d never admit it to him. Or to herself.

They didn’t talk. They just sat on her bed and stared out the window and watched the stars appear. The pale dusky sky deepened to rich velvet studded with pinpoints of light, and still they sat in silence. Eventually, Kathryn’s head listed and came to rest on Tom’s shoulder. Some time later, he tucked her under the blankets and hesitated, not wanting to intrude but unwilling to leave her. Finally he stretched out on the floor, ruefully acknowledging that the plush carpet was somehow harder than that field had been, the last time they fell asleep stargazing together.

He tried to stay awake, dozing to vague memories of Arthurian myths and knightly vigils. Then Kathryn was shaking his shoulder and tugging him to his feet and wrapping herself in his arms, and then in her blanket. Tom was glad of the mattress, of course, but even gladder for what the invitation really meant: Kathryn had taken the lead. That was how it had always been with them — Kathryn charging ahead, Tom following close on her heels — but Gretchen Janeway had commed Tom with worries about her daughter’s listlessness, her apathy, her refusal to make any decision, no matter how small. That small tug on his hand felt like a victory. 

So Tom let himself be pushed and prodded like a pillow, until finally Kathryn had tucked herself into his side.

Then once more he allowed himself a brief indulgence: thanking the universe that he could hold her instead of mourn her. They each fell asleep counting the other’s breaths, Kathryn bleakly grateful that there was one man left in her life who hadn’t left her (who she hadn’t failed, abandoned, lost), and Tom reminding himself with every exhalation that his own fears could wait, that he wasn’t there to solve or fix anything but merely to _be there_ , and trying to convince himself that _being there_ could somehow be enough (it never had been for his father).

In the middle of the night, Gretchen Janeway draped an extra blanket over them, tears in her eyes. Too tired and grief-stricken to feel anything more than relief that her daughter was truly sleeping for a change, and loss that the golden-haired children who had once played among the stars were now earthbound... two peas in a pod.

* * *

(After Caldik Prime, Tom buried himself in places he thought Kathryn would never deign to look for him. He shared his bed with Sandrine, and others, but could never fall asleep next to them.

No one was more surprised than he when Kathryn visited him in prison, hauled him out and dusted him off as if he were their old television rescued from storage. And then she gave him wings again. 

After a few weeks in the Delta Quadrant, that very television reappeared in his quarters. Tom wondered how many years ago Kathryn had retrieved it, whether she’d ever used it, where she learned how to use an electrolockpick to retrieve it from the storage unit in the first place, and why she brought it on board _Voyager_ for what was supposed to be a quick trip through the Badlands.

Tom spent most of his replicator rations restocking his library of favorite old movies, starting with _The Creature from the Black Lagoon_ , wondering if she would ever again knock on his door bearing brandy and brownies, and what he could ever say to her if she did.)

* * *

(After the Warp 10 experiment and all _that_ entailed, Tom beheld the miniature Creature he had previously replicated with a faint sense of horror. Naturally, Kathryn chose that moment to knock on his door bearing brandy and charred brownies and a healthy sense of the absurd. They watched the Creature movies — all of them — and stumbled bleary-eyed to their posts the next morning, not having slept at all, but each feeling lighter than they had in years.) 

* * *

The fifth time they shared a bed — the first time on _Voyager_ (if one didn’t count the amphibious aberration, as Kathryn called it, or “not our finest salamand-hour,” as Tom insisted) — was several months later. In retrospect, it was surprising they had lasted so long without the other as ballast and mainstay, especially careening from crisis to crisis.

That night, there was no crisis. No emergency, no moral quandary, no impending doom. It was just a stupid dream. But it left Kathryn gasping for air in a way she hadn’t since her father and Justin died.

She found herself at Tom’s door the moment she completed the thought. He took one look at her face and ushered her inside, draped a blanket around her shoulders, and steered her straight to bed.

Kathryn buried her face in his shoulder and shuddered. Tears would not come. Neither would breath, except in short, sharp bursts that seemed ready to crack her breastbone in two.

“It’s okay,” whispered Tom, rubbing small circles on her back. “You don’t have to put on a brave face — not here. Not with me.”

That broke the threshold. She let out the sob she had been holding in for almost two years. Maybe even longer. 

Had she ever felt so free, so understood, so safe, even with Mark?

(Oh God, _Mark_.)

“I dreamed Mark died,” she said. Her voice was scratchy. She couldn’t remember the last time she had let herself cry. “It’s not a new dream, but this is the first time I’ve had it on _Voyager_.” And when she woke, her bed was cold and empty. No one lying next to her whose breaths she could count in relief and reassurance. 

Mark was already lost to her; she had made her peace with that a year ago. But that didn’t make the sudden jolt of panic recede. Telling herself that Mark was safe and sound on Earth didn’t quiet the anxiety or cure the helplessness. Kathryn couldn’t wrangle her mind into submission, and she hated it — but the more she fought her own thoughts with logic, the more they haunted her when she closed her eyes. 

“I’m here,” was all that Tom said, but it was enough to slow her heartbeat and ease the catch in her throat. And when they settled into bed, his breathing next to her was slow and even, and Kathryn found herself matching it effortlessly.

And then it was morning.

Maybe it should have been awkward, but it never had been before. Tom was already awake when Kathryn opened her eyes. He was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, his face close to hers — and so serious that she made a joke reflexively.

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, but sleeping with the Captain doesn’t get you extra replicator rations.” As jokes went, it wasn’t her best effort, but Tom obligingly rolled his eyes.

“I’d only use them to feed your coffee addiction, so it’s your loss.” He peered more closely at her, and then a genuine smile broke across his face. “Are you drooling?” Laughing, Kathryn shoved him. Tom rolled over on his back, still grinning. “Pavlov claims another victim.”

“I am _not_ drooling, Thomas.” She couldn’t keep a straight face, though. “You and your Pavlovian principles. If I recall correctly, it was your idea to train all those pigeons back at the Academy.”

Tom snorted. “You make it sound so scientific. All it took was a whistle and some seed and a lot of early mornings.” 

Kathryn chuckled. “It was worth it. Remember Professor Barrold’s face when they all descended _en masse_?”

“I thought she was going to eviscerate us,” sighed Tom in fond reminiscence. 

“Speak for yourself. I was a model cadet.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who got extra credit for ‘a field demonstration of behavioral modification techniques,’ Ms. Model Cadet.”

“That’s Captain Model Cadet to you, mister.” She couldn’t frown convincingly when Tom was busy tickling her neck with a lock of her own hair. She swatted his hand away and had a moment of deja-vu. 

“Feeling better?” Tom asked, all soft and serious again. The temptation to relax into their accustomed banter was strong, but he deserved a serious answer.

Kathryn splayed a hand across his chest. “Better than I have in a long time.” 

“My door’s always open,” said Tom. “Especially to you.”

“Damn straight. I know how to pick locks.”

* * *

The sixth time they shared a bed began as innocently as the first five. Still, Kathryn’s heart nearly stopped when Harry walked in on them. Tom shoved her head unceremoniously under the bulky comforter and held a guileless conversation with Harry right over her head, while she entertained uncharitable (and occasionally lascivious) thoughts, her face pressed into his thigh. What would he do, she wondered, if she licked his knee? Surely he wouldn’t sound so cool and breezy if she ran her fingers up his leg, and up a little further...

Kathryn forced her imagination back inside Pandora’s box. Tom was a friend, she told herself fiercely. Her closest friend. Whom she occasionally slept with. Platonically. 

(Well, technically, they had already procreated. But that was an aberration.)

(Wasn’t it?)

They were talking about music. Dear Harry, still oblivious, sitting on the edge of the bed not six inches from where her feet were tucked between Tom’s, and he was talking about woodwinds.

Tom’s hand crept under the covers to play with her hair. Kathryn nuzzled his thigh, and he froze. 

“Want to join the jam session?” asked Harry. “I’ll even let you blow the trumpet, if you bring along one of the Doctor’s tools to regenerate my shattered eardrums.”

“I’ll take a pass on the, uh, blowing this time. I think I’m going to sleep in a little more.” Tom’s voice was admirably even. “I’m beat. Rain check?”

The bed shifted as Harry stood. “Okay, lazybones, just don’t spend all day in bed.”

“Or what — you’ll tell the Captain?”

Forget gentle teasing; Kathryn wondered what Tom would do if she _bit_ him.

“Maybe I will,” said Harry, “and maybe she’ll institute an off-day exercise regimen for layabout pilots. I bet then you wouldn’t want to spend the day in bed.”

Thankfully, Tom waited until the doors hissed closed before replying “I bet I would,” in a voice so low Kathryn hardly recognized it.

He eased the quilt back over her head. She knew she was flushed, her hair mussed, and God only knew what expression was on her face. Tom pulled her on top of him, so she was draped across his chest, and she could feel his heart hammering — or was it hers? 

She didn't know where to put her hands, and she said so, expecting him to laugh, or roll his eyes, or maybe even give her an answer. She didn’t expect him to clasp her hands in his, and kiss them, and raise them to wind around his neck. But once they were wrapped around him, there didn’t seem much point in moving. 

What in heaven’s name were they doing?

“You think too much,” Tom murmured.

“You talk too much,” Kathryn retorted, and she kissed him.

The sixth time they shared a bed didn’t end at all innocently. Afterwards, Kathryn kept counting, much to Tom’s amusement. Somewhere along the way, the nights turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, and one morning Kathryn woke to a breakfast of cake and wine and a card that said _Happy Anniversary_. 

“Chakotay just sent an amended duty roster,” Tom announced casually. “We have the day off.”

Kathryn had suspected some time ago that their relationship wasn’t exactly a secret anymore, but no one had ever said anything — not Chakotay, not Tuvok, not even Neelix — so she had let it slide, not willing to rock the boat.

Apparently everyone else had been doing the same thing, a shipwide conspiracy to give her some semblance of privacy. (She knew it was her own sensibilities at play, that Tom had been ready to bring their relationship into the open months ago, but he had always been willing to follow her lead.)

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why, do you have someplace better to be on your day off?” he teased.

Kathryn shook her head. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” she said gravely. Tom’s sharp inhalation proved he felt the full import of her words, as the specter of Earth hung between them. He blew out his breath, slowly, wonderingly.

“Move in with me,” he blurted, as impulsive as ever.

Kathryn sniffed. “My quarters are larger. You should move in with me,” she said imperiously. Then she bit her lip. “I mean, if you’d like. That’s not an order.”

Tom laughed out loud. “Katie Janeway, you’ve been ordering me around since I was ten years old. Have I ever objected?”

A smile tugged at her lips. “Frequently.” 

“About anything important?”

Kathryn sobered. “I need to know that you would, Tom. If it was important.”

He nodded. “I would. You know I would. You wouldn’t be with me otherwise.” 

She’d known Tom almost all her life, and still he managed to surprise her. “You’re right,” she admitted. “And I’m sorry, this isn’t how I meant this conversation to go. I should have said yes first, details later.”

“Yes first, cake second, details third,” Tom corrected.

“Cake for breakfast? Are you going to spoil me like this every anniversary?” It was as close as she had ever come to discussing the future — their future — and Tom took it in the spirit in which it was offered. 

“That’s the plan,” he said. He pushed the cake aside to reach across the table and hold her hand. “As long as my replicator rations hold out. I’d hate to drive you away with Neelix’s leola-root buttercream substitute.”

“It would still be better than my cooking,” Kathryn said ruefully. 

His answering smile was vintage Tommy, all mischief and glee. “True,” he said, at which point she was obligated to chase him with a fistful of cake (and real buttercream frosting). And if they inevitably ended up back in bed, not sleeping at all, well... who was counting?


End file.
